homerecordingstime marches on: more modern american songs
Time Marches On: More Modern American Songs
BirdSongs
by Paul A. Epstein
poems by Toby Olson
1. Birds Again
2. Faces
3. Sparrow
4. Moot
In the process of composing BirdSongs, I became increasingly aware of the complex relationship between the human persona of the poems and the natural landscape which the persona is both a part of and, by virtue of human consciousness, set apart from. This relationship is reflected in the musical structure, specifically in the varying degree of integration of voice and piano. Simply put, the two are most isolated from each other in the first and fourth songs, while in the middle two there is considerable sharing of material and contrapuntal interaction. This is especially true in "Faces," where, in both voice and piano, fragments of a single melody are expanded, contracted, and retrograded, much as the poem's images are reflected and refracted by air and water and glass and memory and imagination.
